Rescuing Karui
by reverie2021
Summary: Karui finds herself in a dangerous situation after an angry break up with Choji and gets help from an unexpected friend. ChoKarui, SaiIno, but mostly friendship.
1. Chapter 1

**Summary:** Karui finds herself in a tight situation after a stormy break up with Choji and gets help from an unexpected friend.

**A/N:** All of my stories are interconnected (this is a side sequel to _Worth Fighting For_) but they don't have to be read in any particular order.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Naruto but I love these characters.

Chapter One: The Break Up

Karui stormed out of the Akimichi house and into the street. She stopped suddenly and turned around, glaring furiously at the large man following her.

"So you think that just because your teammates are getting married that I am going to marry you?"

The day had actually started well enough, a casual afternoon gathering of Choji's friends, a rare and precious moment of relaxation before the next disaster rained down on them.

But the conversation had degenerated when the subject of marriage came up. The argument started at Ino's and continued to Choji's place. She stood before him now in the glow of the streetlights, arms folded, with her golden eyes staring at him defiantly. He was very familiar with her hot temper but he had always been able to defuse it before...

"Yes exactly…So will you?" Choji answered, in a tone that combined hopefulness and worry.

"What kind of proposal is that?!" she snapped at him sharply, "You know what—I'm not having this conversation."

As she turned from him, he reached for her arm to stop her from leaving. Only a few people would dare to do that without the fear of losing a hand. He was really the only one strong enough to absorb the intensity of her response. Her voice still had a very angry edge as she looked back at him, fuming. "Look Cho, I'm going to be honest—I really like you and I want to spend time with you. But marriage is another issue altogether. I have obligations in Kumo. And…we've never even _discussed_ this before."

Choji looked down at her genuinely confused, he was so tall, towering over her. "I have to get married, it's part of the clan mandates."

She raised an eyebrow "So you're doing this because you _have_ to."

"No, it's both—I want to _and_ I have to."

Karui rolled her eyes, her beautiful face contorted in frustration and annoyance.

He was still gently holding her arm and he paused to make sure he was being crystal clear. "Ka, please try to understand. Now that my teammates are getting married, I am required to also, so we all stay on the same timeline. You are the only—_the only-_ person I want to be with so you should be the person I marry. Otherwise..." He quickly stopped that train of thought as though it was too awful to think about. But, he could see that she wasn't fully listening, she was hearing without understanding. Of course, that was true for him too. As if in confirmation of that, he finally said in exasperation, "I don't know why this is so complicated."

"I cannot believe you—I'm going home." She yanked her arm from his grasp. Thunder rumbled overhead as the first raindrops started to fall.

"Your _home _is at my family compound while you're in Konoha." He said this triumphantly and exhausted as if he had finally won this argument. Unexpectedly, she reached her hand into the thick fall of his brown hair and kissed him. He responded instinctively, leaning down to her, hoping this was the end of the bickering. Her lips tasted of tea and sake.

"No Choji," her voice sounded uncharacteristically sad, "I'm going back to Kumo." She disentangled herself from him and turned away. He felt disoriented suddenly, like the ground had opened beneath him and he was falling.

All he could think was _I don't want you to leave, I love you, and I would be empty and lost without you._ But he couldn't get the words out, he was suffocating. "You can't leave now," he said, "the village gates are closed, it's dangerous at this hour."

"Dangerous? After all we've been through, you think I can't handle myself?" Without another word, she was gone into the thundering winds and the darkness.

* * *

She knew it was a bad idea-leaving like that. But she was so furious at him and she was furious with herself for getting tangled up with him to begin with—what had she been thinking? The storm blowing around her matched the fury she was feeling. Sheets of rain pasted the strands of her red hair against her dark skin. No, she wasn't sorry she met him. Truthfully, she loved every minute she spent with him. He was powerful but also kind and he treated her like she was precious.

But, the Ino-Shika-Cho thing had been hard to take. It went way beyond normal team bonding even by the hyper-affectionate Konoha standards. Those three ate together, they hung out all the time, they were more like siblings than most siblings she knew.

Of course, she had no siblings and no family as a frame of reference but she felt she had been extremely tolerant of the whole hyper-closeness thing. She had built a genuine friendship with Ino and had helped her on missions including the last one. But this whole business of mandatory marriage was too much. Enough was enough. She was not going to surrender her future to some arcane and unnecessary Konoha ritual that had nothing to do with her.

She looked back at the lights of the village-hundreds of tiny yellow windows shuttered against the raging storm. She should have been near the gates by now but she was disoriented in the blinding rain. It would be impossible to keep travelling in this weather. Nearby was a lone, isolated warehouse, it was her only option for shelter right now.

Surprisingly the side door was unsealed. It gave way to a bit of pressure and opened into an enormous room stacked with hundreds of containers labeled with unfamiliar names. A man startled at her arrival. He turned to run for the door but was intercepted by a masked Konoha ANBU jumping down from the rafters. Karui suddenly wished she had found another place to hide from the storm. The ANBU had obviously been staking out this location and left it open for the thief, or whoever he was, to walk into a trap. This was not her fight. A moment later the thief lay unconscious on the floor, the ANBU had quickly dispatched him with the hilt of his sword.

Despite the blowing storm, the ANBU lifted the body over his shoulder and moved to the exit. "We can't stay here," his voice was distorted by his creepy white animal mask and the deafening storm, "the chemicals are unstable." He was shouting but the storm made it as hard to hear as a whisper. Nonetheless, she nodded her understanding while quickly moving to the door—drenched was definitely better than dead. But, the choice was taken away from her. Lightning, white and lethal, shot from the sky. After that, her awareness faltered. There was an explosion, she could tell that much, and she felt herself blown against the interior wall of the building. Her head was ringing with the impact when another explosion blew the structure apart. The floor beneath her gave way, leaving her freefalling until she slammed into ground of the lowest, subterranean level. As she began to lose consciousness, she felt herself being buried in the explosive fall of wood and metal.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two: Designs in the Ashes

She woke up to a blinding headache, accompanied by the choking spray of dust and ash in her lungs. Instinctively, she coughed and blinked trying to clear her head and eyes enough to take in her surroundings. The ANBU was crouched before her. He was covered in ash and had deep gashes over his bare shoulders and down into his torn black armbands. He pulled off his white animal mask.

"Sai?!" Karui coughed, genuinely stunned, even given her dire circumstances. "What are you doing here?"

"I was finishing a mission," he said, coughing dust and wiping ash from his eyes. "I had been waiting for that smuggler to break in when the storm came." He pulled broken planks of metal and wood off of Karui as she struggled to get up. A sharp pain stabbed her right leg, she winced audibly sucking in a painful breath.

"I think your leg is broken," he said, "You should sit still." Karui's head was still spinning, she knew she hadn't grasped the reality of the situation.

"I don't understand…shouldn't you still be on leave after that last injury?" Karui looked at him with concern despite her own pain. She remembered what he had looked like when they found him a week ago in the forest outside of the Rain village, it had been awful. Sai offered his default mechanical smile. "It's been a week, I was cleared yesterday to finish this mission tonight." She gripped her aching arm and sat up, finally taking in their surroundings. A frustrated sigh escaped her.

All around was destruction and rubble, but worst of all was the undeniable fact that they were completely buried. Two large beams had crossed above them preventing the remainder of the building's wreckage from crushing them on this lowest level, but the security of that barrier seemed tenuous. They were in a small pocket of dubious safety with no way out. Across the way, under more debris, she could see the body of the thief. Sai stumbled over to him and reached down to check his pulse, his face was expressionless as he turned away from the dead body.

Sai looked over at her. "I have my scrolls but I can't find the med pack. Sorry." This day just kept getting worse.

Sai saw the exhausted look on her face. In addition to being shell-shocked, he could tell that she was deeply troubled by something else. But, first things first. He mentally ran through the disaster protocol in his head: secure the area, give emergency first aid, and then send a message for help. Karui gritted her teeth against the pain and looked at Sai tiredly. "We need to check this place out and secure it," she said, "then find something to clean those lacerations on your arm, and then figure out a way to send a message for help." Right, at least they were on the same page, he was grateful to have the company of someone he trusted. They looked around the cramped space and then looked back at each other, willing the other to state the obvious. Sai broke first. "As you can see, there is no way out, any attempt to disturb the rubble will bring the entire weight of the debris down to crush us." Karui nodded in agreement. "It's best to stay still and wait for a rescue."

She looked around at several dented but unbroken containers scattered about and reached down to check the labels, motioning Sai to join her on the ground.

"This looks like bleach…" She said tentatively. Okay, this was going to hurt. He squatted next to her as she carefully removed several jagged wooden shards from the wounds in his shoulder. "Do you want something to bite down on?"

Sai looked at her questioningly. "For what?" Nevermind, she thought. She opened the bleach and poured it into the deep gashes on his arm. He didn't even flinch. Now it was her turn to show off her kunoichi bravery. Sai stretched her leg out gently to examine it. It was definitely badly broken.

The leg was going to have to be snapped back into place before he set it. She understood the situation and looked at him miserably, "Please, just get it over with..." Without making further eye contact, he braced his hands on each side of her leg, then quickly snapped the bone back into place. She gasped, shocked by the pain, but made no sound other than the sharp intake of her breath. He cut a piece of chakra scroll and tied the stiff piece around her leg with the strips of cloth from his arm bands.

"Okay, so can you send a message to let someone know we're down here?"

Sai nodded. A moment later a pair of animated ink beetles emerged from his scroll and scurried up and around the rubble. While he was finishing with the scroll, Karui pulled her white bandana off of her head, shook the dust from it, and tied the folded cloth around his still bleeding shoulder.

"Thank you." he said, "So now we'll just wait." Sai said awkwardly cheerful.

Karui nodded and buried her face in her hands. Well, comforting words were his weakest area but Sai did his best to sound reassuring... "There's probably a rescue team on its way already..." She gave no response.

She's just tired, Sai thought but, for the first time tonight, a question occurred to him.

"Why were you out by yourself at this hour?" he asked quietly. There was no answer at first but a few seconds later she surprised him by bursting into tears.

"I broke up with Choji." she sobbed. In all the time he had known her, he had never seen this sort of reaction from her. But he was just as startled by _what_ she said as by her uncharacteristic tears.

"I don't understand," Sai said feeling genuinely confused, " I thought we all had to get married in the next year. We are supposed to be meeting next week to discuss the timeline for the babies to be born." His voice trailed off to an introspective whisper, "…I definitely have that on my calendar..."

Karui dropped her hands abruptly and stared daggers at him. He decided he should stop speaking.

"Unbelievable," she spat out between sobs, "I can't believe you're okay with this insanity." He considered trying out phrases he'd read in books on useful conversation techniques but after a minute of contemplation he just said,

"I have never seen you cry before."

"You think I'm falling apart."

"No, I cry often. Anger and sadness are my most familiar emotions. The rest are still hard for me. But Ino says crying is actually cleansing."

After a moment passed he finally asked, "So…do you want to talk about it?"

"No. Yes." She sighed tearfully. He sat down beside her. There was no telling how long it would take for them to be rescued. Talking seemed like a reasonable way to pass the time. Karui was still crying quietly, tears streaming down her face, and he really preferred for her to stop so he could understand her better. Talking might help.

"He just threw this marriage thing at me like it was already decided. Like he didn't even need my opinion."

Sai was starting to understand. "You feel forced." He looked up at the mass of debris pinned above them.

Karui nodded, "And it came out of nowhere. All of a sudden it was so urgent."

Sai looked uncomfortable. "Oh, I think that was my fault-Ino and I just got engaged, it was unexpected. We were both ready, though. I want to be married to her. She completes me. She renews me."

Karui didn't know how to respond to that kind of heartfelt comment. People in Konoha were so emotive. "But doesn't the whole ancient clan mandates thing freak you out?"

Sai thought about that. Why didn't it bother him? At last he said, "I suppose it's all just rules and I am used to rules. My life has been defined by them. Getting married is actually freedom for me, a sort of rebellion."

Karui sighed. "I guess I'm the opposite, I grew up as an orphan, skipping school, skirting the rules. As a kunoichi in Kumo, I had to find my own way, my own strength. I never had a family- just my ninja team. Bee was the closest I had to a family. When he was taken away, I fell apart," her voice dropped to almost a whisper, "I was so angry."

She paused, "I guess you remember our first meeting."

"How could I forget," Sai smiled-a genuine smile, "you threw a pretty hard punch." He almost laughed.

"Yes, well that wasn't my proudest moment." She closed her eyes remembering the feel of Naruto's jaw finally breaking against her fist after repeated pounding. She had come for a fight, but he wouldn't fight back, he just lay there while she covered her hands in his blood. Until Sai stepped in and put a stop to it. "I was so upset then. After that, I never wanted to have that kind of dependence on someone else again. It made me feel…vulnerable."

She had stopped crying. Sai was relieved. With a broken piece of wood, he silently drew abstract patterns on the ground in the layer of gray ash. Finally, he said, "When I was a child I was trained to kill, I would kill, learn from it, and be sent out to kill again. I only had one friend, my brother. And then, after all of our time growing up together, I was ordered to kill him too. Danzo wanted to destroy my emotions, he turned me into a mindless killing machine. He referred to us by numbers or by names that changed with each mission. When I was finally free of him, learning to adjust to 'normal' society was like stumbling around in the dark. But, eventually I learned to trust relationships. I think real love is true freedom."

Karui stared at the ground silently and saw Sai's design, elaborate swirls turning inward and flowing out like the explosion that brought her here. A pattern of beauty drawn in the ruins. After a while she said, "I…love him." It felt like a revelation, she exhaled the words into their ash covered tomb.

The space was so quiet. The only sound was their labored breathing and the fall of rain outside. Sai, hesitated before offering the next statement. "Ino told me that if an heir can't find a match on their own, the clan will choose one."

"What…?" She was sure she felt her heart stopping. "You mean he would still get married?"

"Yes."

She suddenly felt panicked. Sai could hear her breathing rapidly. He hoped she wasn't having some delayed claustrophobic panic attack. She finally calmed her breathing enough to get the words out.

"That is really messed up." She looked into Sai's dark eyes. "Konoha seems so enlightened but then I hear something like this-what will happen to Choji, what they did to you-it's just as flawed here as everywhere else."

Sai had no response to that. He moved himself closer to her so she could rest her head on his shoulder. Her exhaustion was palpable as she leaned against him. A long moment passed in silence.

"We'll wait." He said quietly.

Karui lifted her head, "What?"

"Ino and I, Shikamaru and Temari, we will all wait for you and Choji. Until you're ready. I'll talk to Ino. We won't get married until you both are ready." He felt her shoulders shivering against his, she was sobbing, again. This was not the reaction he was going for.

"Thank you," she whispered finally. He knew it was going to be okay now. She closed her eyes as she leaned on his shoulder. He could hear the sounds of workers above them moving debris in the rain and darkness. One of his ink beetles returned and dissolved into the dusty chakra scroll lying next to him. He nudged Karui and pointed to it as the words formed before them.

"_We're coming, wait for us. Love, Ino and Choji."_

Karui smiled, despite herself, and said without looking at him, "I'm going to enjoy having you as a brother-in-law Sai."


End file.
